WGBH Openvault

War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; At the Brink; The Super-Plane of Tomorrow

The B-71, a 2,000-mile-an-hour bomber that is expected to speed the production of a new super-sonic airliner, is unveiled for the first time.

License Clip

Untranscribed item:
Request Transcription

Digitization and Transcription Requests

You can contribute to the digitization and transcription of materials on Open Vault.
Costs vary between items, and digitization may be restricted by copyright,
but explain your interests via
email,
and we will work with you to make more historic WGBH content available to the world.

The first atomic explosion in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945, changed the world forever. This series chronicles these changes and the history of a new era. It traces the development of nuclear weapons, the evolution of nuclear strategy, and the politics of a world with the power to destroy itself.

In thirteen one-hour programs that combine historic footage and recent interviews with key American, Soviet, and European participants, the nuclear age unfolds: the origin and evolution of nuclear weapons; the people of the past who have shaped the events of the present; the ideas and issues that political leaders, scientists, and the public at large must confront, and the prospects for the future. Nuclear Age highlights the profound changes in contemporary thinking imposed by the advent of nuclear weapons.
Series release date: 1/1989

Program Description

In October 1962, the Soviet Union and the United States are at the brink of nuclear war, the 13 most harrowing days in the nuclear age.

“I remember leaving the White House at the end of that Saturday and thinking that might well be the last sunset I ever saw,” recalls former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara of Black Saturday, the day the Cuban missile crisis pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war. Aleksandr Alexseev, Soviet ambassador to Cuba at the time, recalled, “We and the Cubans decided that, in order to avoid a United States invasion, we should supply Cuba with missiles.” The US effort to overthrow Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs was an expression of President Kennedy’s disbelief about the missiles in Cuba while it surprised Soviet leader Khrushchev according to his speechwriter,Feodor Burlatsky. Major General William Fairborne, speaks about how “We loaded whole blood and a hundred coffins onto the carrier Iwo Jima.” Looking back on those 13 days, former Secretary of State Dean Rusk reflects, “...we’ve got to find some way to inhabit this speck of dust in the universe at the same time.”

Chicago:
“War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; At the Brink; The Super-Plane of Tomorrow,”
05/14/1964,
WGBH Media Library & Archives,
accessed December 19, 2018,
http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_37346A2A1FD54D449A22BC530B5428C7.

MLA:
“War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; At the Brink; The Super-Plane of Tomorrow.”
05/14/1964.
WGBH Media Library & Archives.
Web. December 19, 2018.
<http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_37346A2A1FD54D449A22BC530B5428C7>.

APA:
War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; At the Brink; The Super-Plane of Tomorrow.
Boston, MA: WGBH Media Library & Archives.
Retrieved from http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_37346A2A1FD54D449A22BC530B5428C7

If you have more information about this item, we want to know! Please
contact us, including the URL.